Grant Remmen from U of Minnesota Receives Hertz Fellowship Award

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (03/22/2012) —The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation announced today that University of Minnesota Honors Program student Grant Remmen has been awarded a prestigious Hertz Fellowship to support his future graduate studies. Considered to be the nation’s most prestigious and generous support for graduate education in applied sciences and engineering, the Hertz Fellowship is valued at more than $250,000 per student, with support lasting up to five years.

Remmen will graduate summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota’s College of Science and Engineering this spring in each of his three majors: astrophysics, physics, and mathematics. He has been admitted to numerous top Ph.D. programs across the country in physics and astrophysics and will begin graduate study this fall.

Remmen has been conducting original research since his freshman year, and his work on the Milky Way’s dark matter and on the cosmic ray muon velocity distribution has appeared in two publications in the Journal of Undergraduate Research in Physics. At the University of Minnesota- Twin Cities, Remmen has investigated aspherical black holes under the mentorship of Professor Robert Gehrz and is currently conducting Hubble Space Telescope research on Eta Carinae, a complex star system, with Professor Kris Davidson.

Last summer, with the support of an international student scholarship from University College London, he engaged in research on general relativistic spin orbit coupling and its effect on multiple- body gravitational systems with Professor Kinwah Wu, head of theory at Mullard Space Science Lab in England. For his work on galactic dark matter, he was awarded the American Astronomical Society’s Chambliss Medal for exemplary student research. Remmen was named a Goldwater Scholar in his sophomore year. He is also a U.S. Presidential Scholar and a National Merit Scholar, and has received many awards and honors at the University of Minnesota.

Remmen was one of only 15 students selected nationwide for the Hertz Fellowship from more than 600 applications and the only student chosen in the physics/astrophysics area. The highly competitive selection process includes a comprehensive written application, four references, and two rounds of technical interviews by recognized leaders in applied science and engineering. The scholarship is open to graduate students as well as college seniors.

Other 2012 Hertz fellows are from MIT, Harvard, Caltech, Princeton, University of California- Berkeley, Indiana University and the University of Texas, Austin.